Sailplane pilot who wandered across the Iron Curtain in the 1960's.

Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHBzBpV9bOA

At 18:59 22 January 2020, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHBzBpV9bOA

I'm getting old. I was at the 1960 WGC as a 9 year old, and got to
meet the US Team. The SSA chartered a DC-6 (-7 maybe?) from
the old Idlewild (before it was renamed JFK) to Cologne for
members who wanted to buy tickets to go see the WGC. Our family
went along as a vacation and chance for my parents to revisit
friends and family they had not seen since the war. My brother and
I got to meet a lot of relatives and new friends.

We were there for the opening and closing days. I remember Dad's
old friend Albert Falderbaum performing two fantastic aerobatic
displays in his Lo-100. The first was mostly inside maneuvers, and
the second was mostly outside stuff, sort of the mirror image of the
first show, only all done inverted. He rolled inverted at about 50'
on tow right after take-off, and did the whole tow inverted.

The other thing I vividly remember was the Polish team flying over
the finish line in (welded wing) team formation in their Foka's and
Zephyr's. (and people were laughing... Who had the last laugh about
team flying?)

I do not remember Dick's story of having landed in East Germany
though. Much later, at the 1989 WGC in Wiener-Neustadt,
most of us competitors were able to participate in the fall of the
Iron Curtain by flying over Hungary (and 100 out of 115 pilots
landing out there) on the first two contest days with some guys
landing in a mine field on the border!


I think Cologne the first time I met Dick, but I may have met him
at the Elmira Nationals back in 1956(?). 10 years after Cologne, I
was 19 and flying against Dick (and XX, KS, DB, TB, SM, CI++) at
Elmira in the first US STD Nationals. That was 50 years ago now...
Time does fly.

RO

Thanks for taking the time to put that in writing!

--Bob K.